The real war that NATO must prepare is against itself

(To Denise Serangelo)
09/11/15

The tireless exercises that have continued since the beginning of March 2015 represent a new frontier for the Alliance. Last Friday, the largest training phase recorded since the end of the Cold War officially ended. The last shot fired at the 2015 Trident Juncuture, the curtain falls on a period of great fervor and synergy between NATO countries.

In March of this year the ships assigned to the Standing NATO Maritime Group 2 (SNMG 2) arrived in the port of Varna, Bulgaria, for a planned visit after the deployment of the naval group in the Black Sea. The units were led by Admiral Brad Williamson of the United States Navy and trained jointly with Navy ships Bulgarian, Romanian and Turkish. The focus of the exercise was to increase the activation capabilities in the case of collective defense of the allied countries. The inclusion of countries such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Hungary could represent for the Alliance the boost of novelty it needed. Above all, it would be an alternative interpretation to those who firmly maintain that the mobilization of men and half on the old continent is to be attributed to a renewed cold war between the USA and Russia.

Between the 5 and the 20 June took place the multinational exercise in the Baltic named BALTOPS where 49 ships, 61 aircraft and a submarine confronted each other in a scenario of submarine warfare and counter-interdiction. The aircraft served to support, through the third dimension, the maneuvers of the military ships and to have a massive fire coverage.

La Swift Response , Trident Juncture to date, the most discussed and contrasted multinational exercises carried out on European territory since the end of World War II remain. The first was one of the largest mobilizations of airborne troops since the end of the 1945, which involved almost a dozen countries of the alliance and a large number of paratroopers lined up on the ground. The field exercise involved three countries - including Italy - but the bulk of the tactical operations took place in Bulgaria where NATO and the United States are a bilateral military cooperation treaty active by the 2006.

Most analysts screamed at the scandal, arguing that the exercise was designed and conducted with the aim of increasing the American military presence near Ukraine. A plausible scenario but it is good to remember that the collaboration between the Atlantic Pact and the countries of Eastern Europe started in completely unsuspected times, at least five years before the crisis began in Ukraine. Only in September, 2015 took shape the project of the NATO Integration Force Unit (NFIU) which involved only the former Soviet bloc countries, a project that saw the first light at the summit in Wales in the 2014. The six multinational units (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania) with some official 40 for each command, were established to facilitate the deployment of the rapid reaction force (within a week) recently established by NATO. The units are expected to reach full operational capacity by the 2016, when the NATO summit in Warsaw is held. The units will not be established in mode combat and will be used only in cases of serious threat or crisis, which has been specified, to be only external to the European context. The latter is a clear reference to the Ukrainian crisis. An alternative explanation is therefore possible, to the massive mobilization of the Atlantic Alliance, to be read in a purely tactical key.

The readiness to intervene and interoperability between the forces has become a key point in Obama's tired military policy, perhaps, of having to bear the burden of new missions in absolute solitude. In Afghanistan and Iraq there were several flaws in the communication between contingents, despite the ten-year attempt to standardize procedures and armaments. Little joint training and limited knowledge of common skills have created quite a few problems when men were already deployed in the field. Leaks of a system that can no longer be repeated.

The improbable policy of deterrence has stood the test of the cold war, but given the modern geopolitical context and the ever less linear new scenarios, does it still make sense to show its military power to prevent a direct confrontation?

We all know and we know very well that neither Russia nor the United States will be intimidated by some exercises in Europe, which, however great, remains a simple exercise. The students knew that the Americans could deploy a large allied force, even the students, it is unimaginable to think that Putin changes his foreign policy after the Swift Response , Trident Juncture. The opposite is also true, the Kremlin cannot be convinced to change American foreign policy by bombing Syria. The cold war, as we want to revive it, has long since ended and often that smell of history that we want to hear at all costs is only that of books.

La Trident Juncture deserves a separate chapter as NATO's pivotal event for the 2015, never so timely and dynamic. If you do not want to appreciate from a geopolitical point of view, you must congratulate from the military point of view, the deployment of land, naval, air and intelligence he bordered on the unbelievable. Thirty-six thousand men on the ground, a colossal logistic apparatus and a coordination between the various components difficult to repeat. Trident has shown what the Western military has to offer in the international market in the event of a crisis. Beyond what could be the opposition America - Russia the spectacle offered, should be oriented more than anything else to the antagonists of the Middle East: Islamic State and Al-Quaeda in the first place. It is more likely to be impressed by the mobilizations of the Trident be the followers of the self-styled caliph, duped by the mediocre military capabilities of their own leader.

(photo: NATO)